


Black Glass

by unintelligiblescreaming



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Childhood backstory, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Not Shippy, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Relationship, Taako POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-01 03:46:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12147945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unintelligiblescreaming/pseuds/unintelligiblescreaming
Summary: She says, “You’re why I got here and I’m why you got here and that’s something that can’t be broken or lost or taken away.”--Even when Taako's memories of Lup are gone, their echoes remain. (Or: the twins before, during, and after the stolen memories are returned, and how a bond that strong can never be erased.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> first chapter focuses on everything leading up to the first episode of stolen century arc, the next focuses on lup and taako's childhood and their time during the stolen century, and the last focuses on them after the finale.

The umbrella rejects Merle, and Taako thinks, _My turn now._  
  
If he’s honest with himself, there’s no logical reason to think that, other than that it’s clearly an incredibly powerful magical object and goddamn, does he love shiny trinkets. The potential risk of being blasted and getting hurt when they know they could encounter another dangerous foe any minute now should outweigh the potential benefit of having a new toy. Besides, he’s already got a wand.  
  
But being honest with himself isn’t exactly his specialty—what’s the point, really, self-reflection is so _boring_ , and the whole point of playing dumb is so that no one asks too many questions when he endangers himself and his teammates in his drive to pursue his own goals. So when he thinks, _My turn now,_ and the thought slots into his mind like the most obvious thing in the world, he doesn’t question it.  
  
“I’m going to try exactly the same thing he just did,” Taako declares, and while Merle is still opening his mouth to object, he grabs the umbrella.  
  
The power jolts up his arm like electricity. It pushes against his mind, white hot and insistent—  
  
_(burning like a thousand suns, bright as the light that makes a hundred worlds, as familiar as the scars on the backs of his hands, as familiar as the insides of his lungs)_  
  
—he blinks rapidly and pushes back with his mind, a purely instinctive reaction, and then the umbrella accepts him.  
  
He adjusts his grip on the handle. It’s smoothly polished and faintly warm, as if it’s been lying in front of a fireplace instead of inside a damp cave.  
  
“Well, well, well,” he says, starting to grin. “I think I can work with this…”  
  
  
  


 

  
When the Phoenix-Fire Gauntlet turns Phandalin to black glass, the blazing heat washes over him, and he feels something strange. For a moment, it reminds him of the fireplace in his childhood home.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Before the Umbrastaff, when he was just starting his journey toward stardom with his cooking show, his magic would have odd little moments here and there. Once on a particularly scorching summer day, he decided that summoning a wintry cyclone would be just the thing to cope with the heat. He thought, _Yeah, an intense snowstorm in a cone 60 feet tall and 20 feet wide, centered right over there in that empty spot, that’ll be nice and cool,_ and raised his wand.  
  
He was halfway through speaking the name of the spell when he realized that not only did he not know how to summon a snow cyclone of that intensity, he wasn’t even sure a spell like that _existed_ , and where the fuck would he get a seventh-level spell slot anyway? Only a moment ago there had been an incantation on the tip of his tongue, and now he was blinking vaguely at his wand, wondering if he’d finally contracted heatstroke.  
  
His culinary transmutation was flawless, and it was a delicate technique that required a lot of skill, but the real magic was in the showmanship. He dealt in small, flashy bits of power, not spells that could shatter the earth and transform the planes…  
  
_(the light that shines in every world, that glows on every plane, that dances in every cell in every living body, he could hold it in his hands)_  
  
…and yet his bones remembered differently.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Taako has escaped Phandalin and met the Director of the Bureau of Balance, and he’s experiencing something he hasn’t felt in a long while: confidence. He’s waiting as the Director considers the Umbrastaff, and already his thoughts are straying to a certain type magic he hasn’t dared approach in years.  
  
After the forty deaths in Glamour Springs, he refused to transmute anything. For a while he did no magic at all. He snapped his wand and threw the halves into a river, bitter and afraid of what he could do.  
  
The first spell he cast after the poisoning was a defensive one. He was playing pool in some awful dive bar when someone tried to brain him with a pool cue—now that he looks back on the moment, he can’t remember who actually started the fight, only that he’d been looking for a way to release the anger itching in his palms and the bitterness coating his tongue—and he shot back with Scorching Ray faster than he could think. It was evocation magic, not transmutation, and something about it felt… well… not _right_ , it wasn’t the magic that he fell in love with as a kid, it wasn’t the magic that came as easy as a heartbeat, but it felt _fitting._  
  
_(he was a kid and he got hurt, he got pushed around, but his sister would roll her eyes and flick the wand she’d carved herself and suddenly the bullies were yelping as a magic missile whistled past their hair)_  
  
_(and he defended her as well, he was petty and vengeful and cunning and he always had her back, but Lup was smarter and braver and when he was scared and hurting he knew his sister would always be by his side)_  
  
Except Taako is no longer the scared, hurting elf he was after Glamour Springs, and for all that the Umbrastaff works excellently for evocation, he thinks it’s time to return to his roots. Better for the brand, y’know?  
  
The Director looks the umbrella up and down. She’s silent for a long while, dark eyes unreadable, and then she says, “No, I’m afraid I don’t recognize it.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Taako gets hit by an ogre so hard that he almost dies. It pretty much sucks. The good thing is, his cool new umbrella saves his life.  
  
“Don’t you think that’s kinda weird?” says Merle.  
  
“Merle, my dude,” he says pleasantly, “we’re standing on a fake moon base. We met a magic jellyfish that prevents everyone in the world from remembering an entire war. An older lady with a cool staff and a great voice explained that the war was over seven Relics, and apparently we’re the only people who can resist their thrall, despite the fact that we are complete and utter _buffoons_. Well. You two are, at least. My point is—”  
  
“It’s not the weirdest thing we’ve seen, I know,” says Merle. “But still. It’s the only thing we don’t have an explanation for.”  
  
Taako shrugs. “Leon said it was a rare type of artifact.”  
  
“A rare artifact that we looted from a corpse wearing a red robe? An artifact that blasted me but is somehow hunky-dory when it comes to you? Doesn’t that strike you as, I dunno, suspicious?”  
  
“What can I say? I’m just that good,” says Taako, and sweeps out of the room before the cleric can get another word in.  
  
Okay, fine, it’s a little strange that his staff occasionally acts like it has a mind of its own. He’s not an idiot, however convenient it may be to let everyone think otherwise. He’s heard of items that try to worm into their user’s minds by gaining their trust and then sucking up their magical essences, and he has considered the possibility that the Umbrastaff might be one of them.  
  
But, hey, this thing has Fantasy Mary Poppins levels of style, and he has a few outfits that would go absolutely perfectly with the Umbrastaff as an accessory. So he doesn’t worry too much.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The three of them are arguing about something, and as usual, Taako thinks they should head swiftly in the opposite direction instead of rushing recklessly into danger. They’ve already recovered the Gauntlet and the Oculus together, and they’re friends, although Taako would die before admitting it aloud. The exact subject of their disagreement isn’t important. What’s important is what happens next.  
  
He stands up, rolling his eyes. “Okay, this is stupid, argument over. We’re walking away. Come on, Merle, Magnus,” he says over his right shoulder. “And you too,” he adds, looking to his left, where Lu—  
  
Where—  
  
Who?  
  
As he’s staring at the empty space where his gut tells him someone should be, Merle laughs nervously. “Who’re you talking to, kiddo?”  
  
Taako is still trying to shake his brain out of the weird mush it’s suddenly turned into, so he does what he does best and bullshits his way through his response: “Sorry, I just thought there was another one of you. I’m a busy wizard, I can’t be expected to keep track of you clowns one hundred percent of the time.”  
  
“It’s a good thing those spells of yours don’t involve counting,” says Magnus, and Taako uses Mage Hand to flip him off, and everything is normal again.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Taako remembers being twelve. He remembers crossing paths with traveling magicians, going to their shows, watching their fingers dance as they performed showy cantrips for the audience. He remembers his own fingers twitching as they ached to imitate the movements, mouthing the incantations silently from the back row.  
  
He remembers being thirteen and hungering for every glittering scrap of magic in reach, learning every spell he could get his hands on. He was small and scrappy and alone, and he learned to flash a light-making spell in the eyes of an attacker so he could twist out of their grip. Another time, when someone got too drunk and didn’t watch where he was swinging his club, the heavy wooden baton crashed into his shoulder, and he turned it into a cloud of feathers just as the impact came. He’d just performed a high-level spell on instinct with no training whatsoever, and abruptly he thought, _Hey, I’m pretty good at this._  
  
It left him exhausted—limited spell slots are such a pain—and he collapsed on his bedroll as soon as possible. He woke up with his aunt by his bedside. He remembers squinting in the candlelight, seeing her face twisted in worry and something he couldn’t name. She asked if he was feeling better, and once she knew that he was, she said, “Taako, you know that not everyone likes this magic thing you do, right?”  
  
He blinked stupidly. “What… what do you mean?”  
  
“When you do things like this,” his aunt said, “it makes folks uncomfortable. They don’t like to see a kid throwing around spells like that. Especially not that transmu…whatever you call it.”  
  
“Transmutation,” he said quietly. “It’s one of the seven schools of magic. Listen, I’ve been reading about—”  
  
“Don’t you understand what I’m saying?” snapped his aunt. “When you do this, it makes people _afraid.”_  
  
He remembers his stomach sinking. He remembers shrinking down and mumbling “oh” under his breath as a wave of sadness and disappointment washed through him.  
  
And that’s where the memory gets weird, because now that he looks back on it, the recollection resonates with warmth and defiance and strength, and that doesn’t make any sense at all…  
  
_(because Lup was right there next to him, she was there the whole time, because she learned to light fireballs with the ease that adult wizards lit embers, because he was never alone, never never never, because when his aunt said “it makes people afraid” Lup stood up and shouted “good!”)_  
  
_(how could he forget?)_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The Umbrastaff scorches three mysterious letters into the wall of the cafeteria, and Taako’s first thought is _Oh shit, the Director’s gonna be pissed._  
  
Angus goes starry-eyed like it’s the best thing he’s ever goddamn seen and starts rambling about how excited he is to solve a new mystery. Taako guesses it can get kinda dull for a ten-year-old kid stuck on the moon; it’s the only reason he’s volunteering for this whole magic lessons idea. While he talks, Taako finds his thoughts wandering, his mind circling and circling around something he can’t quite process. L-U-P. Is that supposed to mean something to him?  
  
A dim memory surfaces: learning to read and write for the first time. The details are hazy, like a wavering reflection in black glass. He vaguely recalls his aunt demonstrating the shape of each letter, first in Elvish, then in Common. He remembers his aunt coaching him through writing T, then A, then another A, then K, then O. He remembers laboriously forming a second word in his shaky child’s script. L, then U, then P…  
  
There’s something after that, but it’s nothing but static.  
  
His hand tightens on the handle of the Umbrastaff. It’s warm.  
  
Angus is peering at him. “Sir, have you ever noticed anything else strange happen with your umbrella? If you have, I think we should tell the Director at once!”  
  
“The—the Director? You want to tell the Director?” His stomach drops at the idea, and he doesn’t know why. Before he can analyze his reasons, he’s saying, “Nah, nah, nah, Ango. Listen. You gotta drop this, okay?”  
  
“What?” The kid looks confused. “But if your weapon is malfunctioning, or under some strange magical influence, then isn’t it vital that the Director hears about it?”  
  
“Agnes,” says Taako, “be cool. Be cool for at least, like, twenty seconds. For once. I know, I know, it’s hard for someone like you, but you gotta at least try.”  
  
“Sir—”  
  
“Don’t ‘sir’ me,” says Taako, steadfastly ignoring Angus’ pleading puppy eyes. “I’ll handle this. The Director is far too busy and stressed out to bother her over every little thing. If we sent her a report over every weird thing that happens on this moon base it would make a stack on her desk taller than she is.”  
  
“Okay… so it’ll just be the two of us, then! We can figure out the mystery together! Just like old times.” Angus looks hopeful.  
  
“Nnnnope, sorry. I’m too busy for babysitting.”  
  
“But sir—”  
  
“No investigating, and that’s my final word on it. Capiche?”  
  
Angus’ shoulders slump. “If you insist…”  
  
“Now scram. I’ve got things to do.”  
  
As he watches the boy detective leave (and perhaps feels just the teensiest bit bad about the kid’s dejected expression), he realizes his heart is pounding. There’s a fierce protectiveness burning in his chest and he doesn’t know what for. All he knows is that he doesn’t _ever_ want anyone else to lay a hand on this staff, not as long as he lives.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Magnus comes up to him one day with a thoughtful look on his face. Taako’s immediate reaction is _Oh god, pleeeeaaase don’t let this be a emotional heart-to-heart,_ but he’s out of luck. Taako is perched on the couch, rifling through spellbooks, so Magnus sits a few feet away. “I have a bit of a weird question,” says Magnus.  
  
“Fire away,” answers Taako, making a show of being incredibly busy with his reading.  
  
“Do you ever think about how you got to where you are?”  
  
Taako turns a page. “You mean the gigantic cannon that gets us to the Bureau? Yeah, I’ve got no clue how those things work.”  
  
“I meant in terms of experiences, you dingus,” says Magnus. “Do you ever think about who you are as a person, and the things you’ve been through, and how they relate?”  
  
“Sounds like a Merle question.”  
  
Magnus rubs his forehead in frustration. “I don’t want to ask Merle. Look, it’s—sometimes I think about my life, and it just doesn’t fit. I’m not sure how to explain it. Like, my reason for wanting to fight, for wanting to be strong, it has to do with protecting people. But when I was a kid, I wanted to fight because I thought muscles would look really cool, and I’ve changed so much since then—but I don’t know _how_. I don’t know how I got from being that dumb kid to the Magnus I am today.”  
  
Taako pauses. For the first time since Magnus started the conversation, Taako looks up from the book and meets his gaze. “You’re saying that you’ve experienced immense, overwhelming shifts in your view of the world, your life goals, your moral compass, your sense of self… except when you think about what caused those shifts, you come up blank.”  
  
“It’s not blank,” says Magnus. “It’s more like… I’ve got the outlines, but I have trouble with the details.”  
  
“Like looking at a road in midsummer and trying to see the potholes, but the air is shimmering with the heat and you can’t be sure if it’s really a hole or just a trick of the light.”  
  
“Yeah, like that.” Magnus tilts his head. “You ever feel like that?”  
  
Taako decides that’s all the heartfelt conversation he can take. He turns back to his book and squares his shoulders in a standoffish, please-fuck-off-now pose. “No. I don’t.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
They die in the town of Refuge. Then they die again. And again. And again and again and again. He learns to brace for the excruciating moment where his bones crunch and he’s swallowed up by the burning maw of the worm with the same mild irritation that he feels when bracing for a flu shot.  
  
_(it’s not the worst death he’s suffered, and at least they snuffed it together; it’s so much worse when he has to wait out the year after one of the others has died)_  
  
After the third repeat, Merle announces, “Yeah, okay, I’m not a fan.”  
  
Magnus nods in agreement. They both look at Taako, who just shrugs. “It’s business as usual.”  
  
_(it's muscle memory—it never goes away)_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Seeing the Wonderland elf twins vogue their way across the stage to the beat of the flashing lights does something strange to Taako’s head. It’s like looking at his reflection in the mirror, except ever so slightly wrong.  
  
Unsurprisingly, everything goes with alacrity to shit, and naturally, he’s the one who gets the worst of it. A washing-machine-sized chunk of machinery lands on his legs and Merle can’t even heal him. He’s one good hit away from death by the time the wheel lands on the clock symbol.  
  
“Aging is so _tricky_ with elves,” says Lydia with that closemouthed smile. “So we’ll take something else that diminishes with age. How about… your beauty?”  
  
He freezes.  
  
_(the gleam of his eyes, the twist of his grin, the luster of his hair, that’s what makes him look like his sister)_  
  
Edward and Lydia are explaining the consequences of the sacrifice, but the roaring in his ears means he blocks out half of their little speech. “For the first time in your life, you’ll be simply… plain,” Edward finishes. They wait expectantly.  
  
“I’ll take it,” says Taako, and without understanding, he loses the only physical remnant of his twin that he has left.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_“Trust Barry. Love Barry.”_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He drinks the black ichor that glitters with a thousand tiny lights, and it returns the other half of his heart.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the rest of this fic is already written, it just needs some editing.
> 
> while i wrote this, i listened to ["stay alive" by josé gonzález](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/josgonzlez/stayalive.html) on repeat:
> 
>  _There's a rhythm in the rush these days_  
>  _Where the lights don't move and the colors don't fade_  
>  _Leaves you empty with nothing but dreams_  
>  _In a world gone shallow, in a world gone lean_  
>  _But there is a truth and it's on our side_  
>  _Dawn is coming; open your eyes_.


	2. Chapter 2

He is a child.  
  
He is a child, and he has a twin.  
  
It’s raining. He’s huddled under the meager shelter of a tree, arms curled protectively over himself, still shivering from the cold. He watches as Lup paces in front of him, unaffected by the downpour soaking her clothes, fists clenched. They haven’t learned enough magic to defend themselves yet, or her fists would be steaming with flame, ready to Magic Missile the shit out of whatever poor sucker her anger was directed at this time.  
  
She’s spent the last three minutes ranting about the bully whose gang delights in tormenting the two of them. The rant is familiar to Taako, who usually joins in with some cutting remarks at well-placed moments, but he’s cold and wet and this day has been unusually awful. They’re used to the painful altercations that result from their chronic inability to keep their mouths shut, but this time the bullies realized how sensitive elven ears are, and Taako thinks his nerve endings might have permanent damage. He spaces out through most of Lup’s furious talking until he hears at the very end, “I’m gonna give him a piece of my mind.”  
  
That startles him enough to uncurl from his huddled position. “Whoa there,” he says, alarmed. “First of all, you need to work on your catchphrases, that one was frankly pathetic, and second of all, holy shit, you are not fighting them again. That’s not how we roll, remember? We’re hella outnumbered and they already kicked our asses once.”  
  
“What else are we supposed to do? _Run away?”_ She says the last two words as if the worst thing she could ever imagine.  
  
“No, no, listen.” He tries to collect his thoughts and come up with something to say, because if he doesn’t, she’s going to do something stupidly brave, and he's afraid of how that will end. “There’s a third option.”  
  
Lup pauses midstep. “What do you mean?”  
  
“A third option besides running away and fighting when we know we’re gonna lose,” he says. “We don’t have to play by their rules, you know. I have an idea.”  
  
The next morning, a few of the manager’s most valuable possessions go missing and _mysteriously_ appear in the rucksack of Taako’s least favorite person, conveniently revealed in the most incriminating method possible at the most embarrassing and public moment. It’s petty and clever and it works so well that the twins can barely believe their eyes, and they don’t stop laughing for days.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He’s a teenager, and he has a sister, and they play with magic with skill that they will later learn is extraordinary for their age. The caravan has arrived in some podunk town in the middle of nowhere, and they’re wandering away from the city limits, away from the hard, prying eyes of their travel companions. Dusk falls gently over the hills, and as the air cools down, Lup announces, “We should practice!”  
  
“Agreed,” says Taako, taking his wand from where he hides it in the folds of his patched coat. It’s unpolished and hewn roughly from rowan wood, since he had to carve it himself—they can’t afford to buy magical tools like these, so they did their best with what they had—but he’s fiercely proud of it despite that.  
  
Lup starts firing shots into this sky, which gets dangerous when they start arcing back down toward them, but she dodges each of them with a wild laugh. Taako groans and bickers loudly about soot stains, but with the thrum of power tingling through his palms, he can’t bring himself to be too upset.   
  
By the time the sun has set completely and shrouded the hills in darkness, broken only by their conjured light, Taako has turned his ragged hand-me-down clothes into splendid tailored garments in so many different bright colors that it burns the eye. Lup has already exhausted almost all her spell slots, so she’s sprawled out on the grass, tossing clods of dirt at her brother just to annoy him. “Ugh, all you do is clothes,” she complains. “Clothes and little fiddly bits of magic. Do something interesting!”  
  
“Believe me, when I’m done with this jacket, _everyone_ is going to be interested in me,” he says, delivering the most over-the-top wink in his repertoire.  
  
Lup completely ignores his comment. “I bet you’re not practicing any attack spells because you know you suck at them.”  
  
“I do not!”  
  
“Do too! Come on, gimme a Magic Missile. Just one.”  
  
This sounds too much like a dare. He can’t back down. “Anything for you, dearest twin,” says Taako. He points his wand away from the two of them, into the dark, and fires the spell. Or, he tries to. The tip of the wand glows for a second before fizzling out pathetically. He scowls.  
  
“Told you,” says Lup, singsong. “You don’t practice enough.”  
  
They tease each other all the time, but that hits a little too close to home. “I do practice,” he says sharply. “It’s just—it’s not as easy for me.”  
  
“It’s not hard, it’s just point and shoot. You gotta put some oomph into it,” she says, and he loves his sister but he absolutely hates how puzzled she sounds at his failure, how she honestly can’t imagine why he finds it difficult. These spells work the same way her brain works: straightforward, head-on, unyielding. He is none of those things.   
  
He takes a breath and holds up his wand again. He ignores Lup’s recommendation to ‘put some oomph into it’ and instead focuses on the curve of his fingers around the wood, the precise properties of the spell and the nature of the school of magic he needs to call on. The ‘little fiddly bits’ that she disdains. This time the Magic Missile arcs perfectly through the air.   
  
Taako basks in the remnants of the spell’s energy coursing through him. These kinds of spells feel angry, like a pounding pulse on a hectic day, like the short breath before a shout. He supposes the differences in their methods make sense, since Lup’s anger is bright and hot and burns out quick, and his anger is slow and bitter and simmering.  
  
Lup punches a fist in the air. “Woohoo! I knew you could do it!”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He is an adult, and he is about to embark on a mission for the IPRE. They work for the _literal actual IPRE,_ and part of him still can’t believe that _they_ , the lonely unwanted orphaned elf kids who everyone forgot, are Fantasy NASA’s top arcanists. They’re gonna be the first elves in space. It feels like a fever dream.  
  
There’s a fancy-schmancy press conference happening, and Lup leans in and whispers in Taako’s ear—“Hey, I have an important question.”  
  
“Shoot away.”  
  
“If there were two twins in space and one of them killed the other with a rock, would that be fucked up or what?”  
  
Taako struggles to keep himself from laughing out loud during Captain Davenport’s speech. “Oh my god, are you planning my homicide?” he whispers as quietly as he can while still expressing his utter indignation.  
  
“Depends on how badly Barold drives me up the wall in the first twenty days of the mission,” she says. Taako is forming a witty response, but then it’s his turn to take the mic, so he adjusts his snazzy red robe/jacket combination and walks into the spotlight.  
  
As all the eyes in the room land on him, he thinks: _Finally, this is something that no one will ever forget._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The Hunger comes. He could describe it as darkness turned physical, but he’s _conjured_ that kind of darkness before, and this isn’t it. This is worse.  
  
As he watches the roiling dark overcome everything he has ever known, he remembers casting magic for the first time. He remembers the energy humming through him, a melody echoing through every part of existence. If magic is a song, then this is silence. It mutes the world, suffocates it, turns it toward a dusk that never ends.  
  
In the moment they leave their home plane, they are entwined with a light that seems bitterly ironic considering what they’ve just seen.   
  
The crew is shocked, and then horrified, and then grieving. Lup and Taako are no exception, but they meet gazes, and without speaking they know that they’re both thinking the same thing. They’re lucky. It’s a terrible, awful kind of lucky, but they _are._ The rest of the crew is suffering the loss of everything they’ve ever cared for, and the twins are not, because the only things they’ve ever truly cared for are each other.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
This world is about to be eaten, and if that crystal is consumed with it, the Hunger will absorb its power. The crystal needs to be destroyed, or the Hunger will get that much closer to destroying everything else. It doesn’t even occur to him that this is a choice.  
  
“Lup, come on,” he says, moving toward the crystal and readying a spell. When he doesn’t hear her footsteps beside him, he’s confused. He looks back. Lup is staring at him, wary and reluctant. He blinks, surprised.  
  
“Taako,” she says carefully, and his stomach is already sinking, because he can see the stony glint in his sister’s eye, the glint only appears when she’s decided that she’s going to do something and she’ll blast a mountain out of her way if that’s what it takes to get it done.  
  
Then she tells him that she doesn’t want to do this, she tells him that this is wrong, and he doesn’t know what to do.   
  
Because here’s the thing. In the long, impossible time that he’s known the six other travelers across these immeasurable universes, the six people that have become his friends and his family, he’s come to understand exactly how good they are. He’s seen how Davenport works every single day to keep them all safe, how Merle has consigned himself to death over and over for the tiniest scraps of information, how Barry refuses to rest if he thinks there’s research to be done that could help, how Magnus won’t hesitate to sacrifice himself, how Lucretia devotes herself to recording every detail of the worlds they visit and the people they meet so that their memory will live on, how _furiously_ Lup will fight if she thinks something is unjust.  
  
They’re all so, so good, and Taako… isn’t.  
  
His sister says, “Taako, you know this is wrong.”  
  
“Why am I always the pragmatist with you people?” he demands, instead of answering.   
  
Because—no, he doesn’t _know_ this is wrong. He’s aware of the concept of a moral compass, and he’s also aware that his simply doesn’t work properly. He knows that you’re not supposed to hurt people that don’t deserve it, but he knows it in the same way that he knows you should say “please” and “thank you”, and you should drop your clothes in the laundry hamper rather than the floor, and you should wash the dishes once you’re done with dinner because it’ll be a pain to do it in the morning.  
  
He cares about Lup and he cares about his friends, these six people who have wormed their way into his heart. The difference between him and his sister is that Lup does good things because it would tear her apart if she didn’t, and he does good things because, well. His friends would be annoyed if he didn’t.  
  
Lup keeps _looking_ at him, and he blows a strand of hair out of his face and rolls his eyes. He knows what she’s trying to communicate: _help me find a third option._   
  
“Fine,” he says huffily, and starts forming a plan.  
  
(He supposes she’s right about one thing. There’s always a third option.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He really hates this plane they’re visiting. It’s one of the populated ones, with civilizations and everything, and it’s more peaceful and hospitable than many they’ve encountered, but it’s sooooo boring. The land is mostly scrubby grass and flat dirt. The sunsets are brownish. The people have no sense of humor. The food is terrible. Lucretia is ecstatic to learn their history for some reason he can’t fathom, and Lup claims there’s a lot of interesting magical fields, but it’s obviously a flimsy excuse to spend time alone with Barold (as Taako has never stopped referring to him) so Taako just groans dramatically and leaves her alone. They find the Light about two months in, and Taako gets so bored that on multiple occasions he tries juggling the fist-sized ball of metaphysical creation magic to pass the time. (That stops once Lucretia walks in on it and scolds him for an hour straight.)  
  
He almost welcomes the first signs of the Hunger arriving. “At least it’s something to do,” he says to the rest of the IPRE crew, pretending to yawn.  
  
“Yeah, I haven’t been attacked by anything in, like, six months,” says Magnus, although the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He doesn’t have Taako’s gift for detachment, which Taako can’t understand—because honestly, after seventy-something cycles, what the fuck is the _point_ in caring? These people are all so incredibly breakable, so painfully mortal, and even if they don’t die he’s still never going to see them again.   
  
And yet—only an hour later, Taako sees a shadowy warrior raises a sword to cleave a little kid in two, and there isn’t time to use a spell slot, and he thinks, _Well, fuck this shit,_ and gets in the way.   
  
Searing pain. Everything goes dark. Then he’s waking up, wreathed in light, and the rest of the crew _(his family)_ is around him.  
  
He flicks his hair over his shoulder. “Well, there goes my seventh death.”  
  
“I thought heroic sacrifice was Maggie’s job. Magnus, you messed up, Taako’s taking your role now,” says Merle.  
  
“Hey, you’re one to talk about people not doing their jobs properly, cleric,” says Magnus, and they keep bickering. No one brings up the crack in Taako’s meticulously crafted shield of indifference. He’s glad.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The first thing they do on this planet is get shot out of the sky and then immediately get put on trial. Not a great start to the cycle.  
  
“Wait, lemme guess,” says Lup. “Definitely some lust… gluttony in there, probably… pride, for sure… did I miss anything?”  
  
“Wrath,” says Taako helpfully.  
  
“Oh, _hella_ wrath, yeah, definitely,” she says. “That it?”  
  
“How do you plead?” rasps the judge from on high.  
  
Lup chuckles and shoots Taako a grin that he recognizes because he so frequently wears it himself: as if the world is a game and she’s got all the cheat codes. “Guilty, yeah,” she says.  
  
The judges react with stony silence. Then they move on to Davenport and accuse him of getting steadily more wrathful over the course of the journey.  
  
“Haven’t we earned a little wrath?” says Davenport. “After all we’ve been through?”   
  
Taako agrees. Anger isn’t a sin, it’s a tool. It’s something to keep you moving forward when there is nothing else left. The twins learned that together at far too early an age.  
  
Now the judges turn to Taako himself. He smiles pleasantly at them and starts preparing a spell slot.  
  
The voice that booms down is smooth, eloquent, and disappointed. “Taako, you were born with so little,” it says, “and therefore justify your insatiable desire for more. You champion your own growth in power and station, but have never had a moment of satisfaction your entire life. Your past sins are greed, envy and pride. How do you plead?”  
  
“I plead not visible,” he says… and that would have been a fucking _fantastic_ line if it weren’t for the fact that this place is apparently magic-resistant and his attempt to cast Invisibility fails completely. Well, shit.  
  
Despite the seriousness of the situation, his wonderful, dear, sweet, loyal twin sister is choking on a laugh. He feels vaguely betrayed.  
  
The prosecutor guy looks exhausted and confused. “Can the defense clarify its statement?”  
  
“Yes,” says Taako quickly, and switches to his usual Plan B, which is to bullshit his way out. “One of my sins is poor pronunciation. Uh… not guilty at all, actually! I’ve been satisfied many times, one time I made this perfect amouse-bouche that included lemon and saffron and it was delicious and I was extremely satisfied with that, never even attempted it again—” Lup is nodding, understanding exactly the meal he’s referencing. “—and let me ask you this, if you’re completely satisfied then is that not a form of sloth? I don’t see how those two aren’t contradictory.”  
  
He hopes that distant authoritative voices in the sky are fond of clever bullshit arguments, because he sure as hell isn’t down with any of that solemn self-deprecation nonsense. If there’s one thing his sister has taught him, it’s to never apologize for what you don’t regret.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“I need you to help me have a really, really good day,” says Lup.  
  
So he does.  
  
He knows her as innately as if he is one half of a pair of lungs and she is the other, so he knows that what she needs right now (what they both need right now) is to live a day as if they were kids again. Their hard childhood cheated them of the wild abandon all children should be free to feel, and as young adults they spent every day making use of the feverish energy and youthful ambition they never had a chance to exercise. But the Hunger is gaining on them, and in the past ten cycles, the responsibility resting on their shoulders has kept them from that freedom.  
  
So he gives Lup a luxurious morning and a sunny noontime and a deliriously destructive afternoon, and then he gives her an evening that tastes like home.  
  
That’s when she tells him.   
  
“Barry and I are going to do something in a few days, and I want you to be there for it. Don’t freak out, promise me, but we’re going to become liches,” she says.  
  
The universe shatters around him. He finds himself nodding, gesturing reassuringly, cracking jokes, acting like a normal sentient being, but it’s like he’s cast Blink—he’s watching himself from outside his body, separate from the physical realm.   
  
“Barry already gave me a day, and I love him with all my heart,” she says, “but you—I needed a day from you too, because you _are_ my heart. You know that, right?”  
  
He knows.  
  
She says, “You’re why I got here and I’m why you got here and that’s something that can’t be broken or lost or taken away.”  
  
In this warmly lit dining room that feels like the only center of motion in this still, silent world, he realizes that he’s afraid. He hadn’t known he still remembered how to _be_ afraid.  
  
When she leaves her form and becomes pure energy, the only thing linking her back to her true self will be the bond of her love and caring for him and for the rest of this strange family. She’s asking him to trust that it will be enough. That _he_ will be enough. He’s never doubted their loyalty to each other, but suddenly in this moment he’s struck with terror—is he really sure that he’s a good enough person, a good enough brother, that Lup will want to come back?  
  
That night, as he tries and fails to get some rest, he thinks about how Lup never asked if he wanted to undergo the same process. He knows why. It’s because Lup and Barry’s lich forms will be sustained by love, and Taako just—isn’t good at that. It’s not an insult, it’s just the truth. He’s a cynical asshole who isn’t good at reminding himself of all the reasons he cares for the people around him. He’s grown far too skilled at pretending to push them away.   
  
He checks and double-checks every single arcanic aspect of the necromantic ritual they want to perform, half-hoping he’ll find some serious error that means the plan won’t work and he won’t have to face the risk of losing her. But Lup and her dumb boyfriend are just too damn smart for their own good, and after all these decades of study Barry might just be the most knowledgeable necromancer in the universe. (That would be pretty cool, except Barry is also the boringest nerd in the universe.)  
  
Apparently the form they wear during the ritual is the form their spirits will wear forever, so they wear their best red robes. Taako does Lup’s makeup.  
  
There’s no flash of light as the ceremony is complete, no moment where the magic sings through the air. The only sign that something has transpired is a glimmer of energy in Lup’s eye, and then their bodies are folding into the ground.  
  
They rise again in a swirl of ghostly crimson, a bloody, defiant slash across the world.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

His memories don’t return. _Return_ is the wrong word. His head splits with pain, bright and burning, and the void releases its grip, and suddenly he’s seeing clearly for the first time in ten years.   
  
These things have always been inside him, pumping in his blood, tucked away beside his lungs. But half his memories—half his life—has been swimming in static for so long that he could hardly recognize himself in the mirror. He can’t believe he’s managed to maintain his good looks all this time when his eyes were glitching with static every time he looked at his own reflection.   
  
(The thought of looking in the mirror and not thinking _sister, sister, sister_ at some level too deep to be conscious—it’s no better than glimpsing his image distorted in black glass.)  
  
With clarity comes grief. With grief comes anger.  
  
He points the Umbrastaff at Lucretia. _“Ten,”_ he spits. _“Nine. Eight. Seven—”_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
No time to get revenge. Not with yet another world to save. He wants to abandon the fight and attack the one person he’s really angry at, but whenever he looks at Lucretia’s face and sees that expression, the one where she looks oh-so-sad and regretful, he can’t breathe. Lucretia really doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get it at all. He would rather she had punched through his ribcage and torn out his still-beating heart than for Lucretia to have done what she did, and she just doesn’t _understand._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Sir, I didn’t cast that,” Angus babbles. “That wasn’t me!”  
  
“I know,” says Taako. “I know.”  
  
The umbrella’s handle is scorching hot, but it doesn’t burn him. He feels the thrum of its blazing power, a chord in a song he knows better than his own name. He closes his eyes and thinks of home—not a place, but a person.   
  
And he snaps the Umbrastaff in two.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
After the end of the world, everything is fine.  
  
The concept of it almost breaks Taako’s brain. No more earth-shattering war? Sentient beings getting along on a wide scale? Their shared story as the glue that binds together entire civilizations? It doesn’t seem possible.   
  
And that’s another thing. The story and song that was broadcasted across all of reality means that everyone he meets knows his name, which is great, but they also know a lot more than his name, which is significantly less than great. Strangers will run up to him in the street and say, “Thank you so much for saving us!” They’ll pat him on the shoulder and say consolingly, “I’m so glad you got your family back.” When his boyfriend takes him out to a fancy restaurant, the waitress will interrupt to tell him, “I don’t mind that you lost your beauty in Wonderland, really.” He’ll be shopping somewhere, minding his own business, when the store clerk will come up and ask, “What was it like, forgetting your sister?”  
  
“None of your fucking business,” he tells the clerk. Then he casts Sleep on all the customers and staff, pockets all the valuable goods he can carry, and scorches the door into cinders on his way out.  
  
Time to start up the show again, he thinks as he simmers in his bad mood all throughout the evening. Maybe make people remember something about me that isn’t my tragic fucking backstory.  
  
It’s barely a few weeks after the Hunger was defeated, and they’re all still on the Bureau’s base. He hates it. He refuses to admit it, but it’s a permanent, hulking reminder of the years he spent with his memories smothered in static. Plus it’s a fake moon base, so even when he’s planetside he can’t get away from the damn thing. It just hangs in the sky, constantly visible, completely inescapable.  
  
He finds himself wandering through the apartment, too restless to sit still. No one else is there tonight. Eventually he collapses on the couch. He pulls out his stone of farspeech and dials a frequency he knows by heart.  
  
“Heyyyyy there, Loop-de-loop,” he says, in an affected drawl.  
  
 _“Yeeeeeees?”_ she answers, echoing his tone.  
  
“How’s it hangin’?”  
  
 _“Did you really call just to ask me how it’s hanging? Because we literally spoke five hours ago.”_  
  
“What, is talking to my favorite twin illegal now?”  
  
 _"I'm your only twin,"_ she says. Then, a pause. Apparently Taako failed his casually-brushing-off-emotional-breakdowns check, because Lup says, _“Do you need me to come over?”_  
  
“What? No, don’t—”  
  
The frequency dissolves into static. She’s hung up. Seconds later, she steps out of a rift in the air and comes to a halt a few feet away from where Taako is lounging on the couch. She raises an eyebrow.  
  
“You’ve been so obnoxious since Kravitz taught you that trick,” he says. Her red robes are extra billowy and impressive today, and she’s done something fancy with her hair, braided it and wound it in long coils. At first glance it’s impossible to tell that her body is less than corporeal, but he’s an experienced enough arcanist to notice how her form shimmers at the edges, like a beam of white light dissolving into its constituent colors. He swallows past a lump in his throat. She looks so real, but if he were to reach out, his hand would pass right through hers.  
  
“You look like a wreck. Did you even eat today?” says Lup skeptically. He sees her purses her lips, sweeping her gaze over his demeanor and the tension at the corners of his eyes, and he can tell that she’s doing that not-really-magic twin thing where she instantly diagnoses what’s wrong.   
  
He mutters something about buying snacks from Fantasy Costco. She rolls her eyes. “That’s not a real meal! Come on, let’s make something. You still need to show me all the tricks you’ve learned.”  
  
The unspoken addendum: _that you learned_ _while I was gone_. They never bring it up directly. Taako figures that’s probably not a good thing, psychologically speaking, but he’s also kind of glad.  
  
Several hours later, once the meal is over and the leftovers are in the fantasy refrigerator and the plates are in the sink for someone else to deal with, the conversation comes to a lull. He’s running out of topics that aren’t tangentially related to the anxiety and regret gnawing a hole through his skull.   
  
Unfortunately, because Lup knows him better than he knows himself, she leans forward across the table and says, “You know I’m never going away again, right? Not ever.”  
  
His eyes shudder closed. “Yeah you are. Soon you’ll leave to go work for the Raven Queen.”  
  
“That’s not—I won’t be leaving. You’ll always be able to reach me.”  
  
“You can’t promise that for sure.”  
  
“I can,” she says fiercely. “No more notes on the kitchen table. I’m always gonna be here. The warranty’s run out, no refunds, now you’re stuck with me.”  
  
He nods slowly. Maybe if he hears it enough times, he’ll start to believe it. “Can I… can I ask a question?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“What was it like? In the Umbrastaff. Did you know what was happening? Could you hear me?” _Could you hear me pretend I didn’t have a sister?_  
  
“Sometimes. It took me a long while to wake up. But I could always feel you, you know? I could tell that you were there. Otherwise, though, it was like I was sleeping. Even now it still feels like a dream.”  
  
“ _This_ feels like a dream,” he says. “I was—when you weren’t there, it was like I was a different person, I don’t—I don’t want to wake up and find that I’m that person again.”  
  
“You weren’t a different person,” she says, and reaches out her hand to cover his. It feels like static, which makes his breath hitch, but then he feels the warmth emanating from her, bright and hot and on the verge of burning, and the sudden fear drains away. Lup says, “You were always the same Taako. Lucretia’s pretty smart, but I don’t think she managed to make you forget completely. Trust me.”  
  
“How do you _know?”_  
  
“I just do.”  
  
He looks at where her ghostly fingers are nearly twined with his, and then at the coils of her hair, and then at the curve of her smile, and then at the glint in her eyes. He tells himself: _this is real, this is real, this is real_. This is every spark of defiance he felt in the ragged days of his childhood. This is every conjured flame that kept him warm on a rainy night. This is his other half sitting across from him.  
  
“Okay,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not entirely satisfied with how this last chapter turned out, but it's good enough. i hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
